“I still have this idea that home servers will replace the cloud very soon. Hardware is just so damn cheap and bandwidth keeps getting cheaper too.”
But the software isn't going that direction, and there's no financial gain for any company in the current chain (internet service providers, OEMs and tertiary services like Facebook, Twitter &c.) to turn the Internet inside out like that and put the data and control into the hands of individuals. Sadly, more centralised is the way it is going and that's where the money is so it isn't going to go away any time this decade.
“Someone could just as well be frustrated they can’t repair the circuitry of a graphics card without specialty tools and diagrams only available through an “approved channel,” etc.”
This much is true, and I know that, but I am not pontificating in a vacuum; this is my life in the here and now and this is my livelihood.
“i disagree about your history of bbses and the internet.
it wasnt so cut and dried and so fast.”
It was a generalisation, and I am aware that it wasn't so simple as that -- however, the key point is that the new was an inherently incompatible method compared to the old. One replaced the other because the two were not intertwined. A person using a Windows PC and AOL to access the 'Web was very far removed from using a telnet client to dial-in to BBSes one at a time. That was why it was a generational shift, rather than the usual yearly improvement of technology.
“It seems to me that we have the home computer/desktop/laptop back where we want it - in the hands of the professionals who actually need to get things done”
But if getting those things done can only be possible through an app store, then that is a slippery slope into companies telling you what is and isn't possible for you to do. And what if what I want to do requires me being able to run portable software? Is my job simply not possible, outdated even, only because of the policy implementation of Microsoft and _not because of any physical limitation of the device_. We're talking about Microsoft and Apple making certain tasks redundant through nothing but arbitrary and selfish reasons. That's not progress, no matter how you paint it.
I can only hope for a resurgence of Linux, ironically via PC gaming, since Microsoft are hanging a noose around a large portion of that market.